Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/258

 Now it is just here that a special aspect of worship presents itself. For in that first unity the negation of the subject is superficial and accidental, and what broods over the subject is only the feeling of sadness, the thought of necessity, which is a negative element as opposed to that living unity. But this negativity has also to become actual, and prove itself to be a higher power over that unity. This necessity does not remain merely an idea or general conception; the lot of man becomes a stern one, the natural man passes away, death makes serious work with him, fate devours him, and he is comfortless, for the very reconciliation, the unity, is not that of what is deepest and most inward; but, on the other hand, the natural life is still an essential moment, and is not relinquished. The division has not as yet gone so far as this; a unity of the natural and spiritual has, on the contrary, remained, in which the former maintains an affirmative character. This destiny has now to be transformed for ordinary thought and in a subjective manner, into the affirmative, and thus the spirits of the dead are regarded as the unreconciled element which has to be reconciled: they must be avenged for the injustice of their death. Here, accordingly, we have that service in honour of the dead, which is an essential part or aspect of worship.

3. The higher attitude, then, as compared with this last stage of worship, is that where subjectivity has arrived at the consciousness of its intrinsic infinitude. It is here that religion and worship enter completely into the domain of freedom. The subject knows itself to be infinite, and knows itself to be such in its character as subject. In this it is involved that what was formerly the Unrevealed or Undisclosed has the moment of individuality in itself, so that individuality by this means acquires absolute value. But now individuality has value as being this absolute and consequently purely universal singularity or individuality. Here the individual exists only through